One of my blogging New Year's Resolutions for the past several years has been to get my baseball card collection fully organized. I'd love to sit here and tell you that today's the day where I finally completed that goal but no, not even close! However, I can tell you that today I'm taking a rather large (mini?) step closer...that's right, it's finally time to start my Allen & Ginter mini Frankenset.
The idea of a Frankenset is not mine. Honestly, I don't remember where I first heard of such a thing but I know a number of bloggers out there have their own version (and I already have two Frankensets started myself - a Reds version and a non-Reds version but only for full-sized base cards). Today, I'm finally getting around to starting my mini Frankenset!
The rules for my personal mini A&G Frankenset are quite simple: The best card for each card number goes in the slot. Priority will go to players (and teams) that I like as well as cool or interesting oddball cards. Generally, I'll probably give priority to the higher rarity minis (i.e. A&G backs and black bordered minis) but in the case of oddball subjects I'll try to avoid the A&G backs in particular because they don't have the written blurbs on the back about the card's subject (something that oddball cards should have)! One final thought: I'm only going to try and build a mini set with cards #1 - 350, the typical size of the Allen & Ginter base set.
For the past several years, I've set aside various A&G minis for possible inclusion into a mini Frankenset. I've got stacks of cards from A&G sets ranging from 2009 all the way through 2021.
Trying to figure out how to start the mini Frankenset was tricky so I went for the path of least resistance and started by sorting through my various stacks of black bordered minis.
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| Some of the already rejected black border minis. |
From there, I then moved on to the A&G backs. I kind of like how the A&G back designs have varied over the years.
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| About half of my A&G backs sorted as of this photo! |
And next, (though this part isn't done yet), I will move on to the large stacks of regular back mini cards!
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| Lots of mini base cards to sort through yet! |
I am cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to write another updated for my mini Frankenset soon showing off some of my choices. I doubt I'll be able to fill all 350 slots on the first go around but hopefully I won't be missing too many card numbers. Then, once the initial pass through is complete it'll be much, much easier to take any future mini card acquisitions and compare them to the appropriate spots in my set binder!
This should be a lot of fun. You're the first blogger that pops into my head when I think of A&G. can't wait to see how many slots you have filled from the first round.
ReplyDeleteI'm having fun making the set - the first 60 slots will be revealed on the blog tomorrow!
DeleteLooking forward to seeing this develop! Will the cards in the set be made up of duplicates only?
ReplyDeleteNo, the set will (mostly) be non-duplicates! I've been "hoarding" minis for a number of years now and I'm finally ready to get them sorted into a Frankenset! All of my Frankenset rejects will probably end up on TCDB in case anyone else is looking for Ginter minis (regular back, A&G back, and black bordered).
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